26. Who is responsible for the dull and indifferent quality of English teaching?

Since a minor discussion the quality of English education has been initiated, there is need to take it to completion.

The easiest persons to hold responsible for the lacklustre quality of English education in this nation would be the teachers. However, this is only a hasty action, to place the responsibility on someone, who comes handy.

Actually the teachers hold only very little responsibility for the growing inferiority of English education. The very striking fact that many teachers are very weak in English need not be taken as the prominent issue in this. Instead of this, the most horrendous aspect in this regard is the unspoken aim at the policy-making level that English should be discouraged from gathering strength in this nation.

It is very clear that the policymakers do not know what really are the most attractive teaching materials available for English. Beyond that the textbook designing done for government schools are done in a very meticulously planned, lacklustre and repulsive manner.

The government school textbooks assigned for teaching English are extremely dull and unattractive. In most cases, there is no attractive content from English classical literature in the textbooks. If at all, such things are there, they would be of the most unpalatable kind.

It is felt that the policymakers do not have even an iota of idea as to the real aim of teaching English.

From a cursory perspective, it might be felt that the textbooks found in private schools are quite good and attractive. However, actually most (not all) of them have been designed with some glossy features only from a marketing and profit-making point of view.

When this writer had been in Delhi for a brief period of time many years ago, some direct experience in the ways and manners of the textbook industry had been had. The textbook industry which has a combined monetary value of multimillions, bordering on billions, is very much focused on profit making. Many businessmen who have risen in this business field did not come up by means of quality textbook production. Instead their route was through very meticulously planned marketing techniques.

There are a lot of business secrets related to this. However, there is no aim to divulge them here.

If the teachers have to take English education to a very high level, first of all, there should be an environment at the policymaking level that promotes and encourages this.

However, that ambience there is conspicuous by its absence.

The persons who are designing the education policy should themselves be aware of quality English. The general feeling that emanates from them is that they do not have this awareness at all.

However, once we approach these persons, they would clearly be innocent of many malicious intentions. The culprit would be seen to be the low-class English education that they have had in their own student days.

Then one would have to move the blame upwards to higher level of persons. If, one by one, one were to go upwards through the various levels of the administrative set up, one would be able to ultimately locate the exact location where the delinquency has commenced from.

About this location, more details can be revealed only much later in this writing